GG Guliyeva

Nigar Guliyeva designs towers for a skyline in a hurry, the youngest architect on her firm's signature project and the one who argued the cantilever through committee. She sketches constantly and sleeps irregularly. She plays at the studio. Always at the same desk, door open, colleagues wandering past and occasionally stopping to disagree with a move, and never at the flat, where she says the board would simply become another thing she was working on. On Fridays the desk becomes a chouette with two engineers and the model-maker, played for money and settled at the end of the month, and the door stays open for that as well. She reads a structure fast and commits hard, cube out the moment she sees the line, and would rather lose pressing than win cautiously. A building that risks nothing, as she puts it, is expensive shelter.